by John Kingsmill My new Adelaide Review editor only gave me 250 words on the Melbourne Cup this year. I filed this last week when there were still 39 hats in the ring: Alcopop took SA country form to Melbourne, won the JRA and Herbert Power and went straight to the Cup. Skip the premarket [Read more]
Search Results for: Ron Reed
The Silk Road to South Africa
October 21, 2009 by Leave a Comment
by Tony Wilson The Socceroos final round of World Cup qualifying began on the Silk Road in Tashkent, and they never really got off it. It is not meant to be this smooth. Nigeria has fallen short again. Powerhouses like Portugal and France are still sweating. After sixteen matches, Argentina is fifth in a South [Read more]
Old footballers don’t die, they play AFL Masters
October 21, 2009 by 3 Comments
By Andrew Nathan It’s another steamy night in Cairns. I’m in the Vic Metro team that is about to play its first match in the annual AFL Masters tournament. I’ve played in two previous carnivals, in Maroochydore in 2006 and Darwin in ’08, and I’m 43 years of age—but I still get nervous before pulling [Read more]
Racing: You want winners? Look no further than this site
October 11, 2009 by 17 Comments
By Chris Riordan Every Saturday and most public holidays I stand in the betting ring, bag around my neck, grabbing money from the dreamers and the greedy. Inevitably I am asked for a tip. “You must know?!” It bemuses me. I want to point out that I’m the one who is working during everyone else’s [Read more]
General Footy Writing: The days of plain sailing in the AFL may well be numbered
October 7, 2009 by 3 Comments
By Sam Steele AFL entered the new millennium on Wednesday 8 March 2000. A midweek matching of Melbourne and Richmond at an unusually early time of year, was followed the next evening by Essendon hosting Port Adelaide, in the first match for premiership points at the Docklands Stadium. If such radical scheduling was meant to [Read more]
The Wrap: Don’t say I didn’t warn you
October 2, 2009 by 3 Comments
HEADLINES WE’LL BE SEEING IN 2010 Here you go Wrappers. We’ve just got the Wrap Crystal Ball back from the dry cleaners. We gave it a bit of a rub and these are the headlines that materialized out of the mist. How do they match up with your crystal ball? PRE SEASON AFL CEO Ayatollah [Read more]
Harms: The Magpie Creature just won’t die
September 17, 2009 by 5 Comments
THIS is madness. I am getting worried. About the creature that is the Collingwood Football Club. It is like some alien in a sci-fi movie; some vile, bile-spewing monster that cannot be killed. Like some vampire in the last leg of a midnight-to-dawn marathon and all you have to protect you is a pair of [Read more]
General Footy Writing: Wild Cats (Felis catus) take centre route to big kill
September 17, 2009 by 2 Comments
Throughout the land fans of at least four footy tribes are all a little excited. Maybe it is just a spring thing but for some it is has deteriorated into a serious nervous affliction. This was worryingly apparent in the weekly words from Cat tragic and fellow ‘Knacker” John Harms in this morning’s Age. Plagues [Read more]
Local Footy: Little Lions roar in Tassie Midlands grand final
September 16, 2009 by 3 Comments
By Daryl Sharpen About an hour’s drive north of Hobart is the town of Oatlands, in the Tasmanian Midlands. In a long forgotten past it served as a carriage stop for travellers as they made their way north or south in a penal colony known as Van Diemen’s Land. It is generally considered to be [Read more]
AFL Preliminary Finals: What’s this business that the Pies have the wood on Geelong?
September 15, 2009 by 11 Comments
Here’s one for the Collingwood fans. At the completion of Geelong’s annus horribilis in 2006 the club was determined to trade Steve Johnson. Give us a second-round draft pick and we’ll throw in a set of steak knives, club officials said. Collingwood seemed interested. Geelong would have thrown in two sets of steak knives if [Read more]
Local Footy: Benalla and District league’s demise is a sad event in country footy
September 8, 2009 by 1 Comment
By Hamish Cameron This September, spare a thought for Victoria’s smallest football league. After years of conjecture and a recent review by the Victorian Country Football League administration, the Benalla and District Football League has been deemed unsustainable. Therefore, following the finals, the league will disband – after more than 60 years of blood, sweat, [Read more]
Poetry: From the Bounce by Michael Viljoen
September 4, 2009 by Leave a Comment
From that first cherry plucked when Adam was small To when suburban clan rivalries divided us all Words mêlée and fight as our poets recite The deeds and the lore of football Though others assume this most sacred name As rugby, and gridiron, even soccer may claim Of feats gazed upon in sport’s pantheon From [Read more]
Local Footy: Heidelberg reveal size of task for Northern league rivals
August 27, 2009 by 4 Comments
By Paul Daffey In 2000 I went to the Eastern Football League grand final between East Burwood and Vermont. It was the last match held at Waverley Park before that ground was closed down as a venue for footy matches. I remember a cold, crisp night and a match of ill-humour. The sprinkling of spectators [Read more]
Racing: As old Jack shows, you still meet some cracking characters in the betting ring
August 18, 2009 by Leave a Comment
Working at the races does give you access to some unusual characters, and I try to make sure that I don’t get bogged down in the greed of the betting ring and that I enjoy some of the identities. My Dad, a long-time bookie in Adelaide, always loved the wags and saw them as part [Read more]
General Footy Writing: An open letter to Neil Craig (after a slap to the editors)
August 16, 2009 by Leave a Comment
John Kingsmill On the City of Churches, Adelaide Pubs, Why Neil Craig is Obstinate, and How the Adelaide Fans Have Got It Wrong for Five Long Years PREAMBLE First, more things Footy Almanac readers don’t need to know. Or perhaps they do. Not colonised by convicts but by free settlers, South Australia offered another attraction [Read more]
Cricket: Amid scandal and despair, Stephen Fry finds reason to toast England, Australia and cricket itself
August 13, 2009 by Leave a Comment
This is an edited version of Stephen Fry’s speech at a dinner for Andrew Strauss at Lords before the second Test … Thank you ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much indeed. It is an honour to stand before so many cricketing heroes from England and from Australia and at this, my favourite time of [Read more]
Ireland Correspondent: Cahill leaves stamp on lacklustre friendly in Limerick
August 13, 2009 by Leave a Comment
By Peter Lenaghan The crowd’s response tells you a lot about a game of soccer, and the atmosphere inside a Dublin pub is as flat as it sounds at Limerick’s Thomond Park. It is all Tim Cahill’s fault, and the locals seem genuinely shocked. The small group of Australians around us can only smile and [Read more]
Local Footy: Vermont forwards show the value of keeping your mind on the game
August 12, 2009 by 4 Comments
By Paul Daffey Five minutes after the siren went at Vermont to signal a comfortable, eight-goal win for the home team over Eastern Football League rival Blackburn on Saturday, I cut my son from the herd of kids swarming across the playground and told him we were going to the dressing-rooms to say hello to [Read more]
AFL Round 19: Bomber faithful left to ponder meaning of football life
August 12, 2009 by 1 Comment
Life is full of surprises. Sometimes they can leave you almost breathless with shock. It’s possible to be gobsmacked and bewildered from a great distance, even when you can’t see things. Events can often defy logical human explanation.
Cricket: It’s Headingley 1981 and I want to be sedated
August 5, 2009 by 8 Comments
By Tony Roberts The gloomiest roommate I ever endured was Bernard Disken. At the time we met in September 1983, Bernard was only 23, but he’d already mastered the full Eeyore to an extent that must have made his fellow disciples of the defunct House of York grey with envy.
Recent Comments